21C LEARNing Blog

These posts explore issues related to learning and teaching for the 21st century, with an eye toward promising practices and how to make systemic change happen. Sponsored by The Council on 21st Century Learning.

Catch the conversation about teacher inquiry as a vehicle for professional learning as recorded during CoLearning Network’s February webinar with Michelle Bourgeois (Co-director of St. Vrain Valley School District’s Digital Learning Community [DLC]) and Stevan Kalmon (Director of the Council on 21st Century Learning) will lead the conversation. Collaborative inquiry is central to St. Vrain’s DLC […]

I like to drive what my colleague Dixie Good calls the Mosey Road. The roads or streets with less traffic and less anxiety. I look for roads with good flow. I don’t need to go 75, or even 55; just cruising is fine, often better, so long as I don’t have to stop frequently. Typically […]

In my previous post (“Professional Learning Communities… really“), I raved about the St. Vrain Valley School District’s PLC model, the Digital Learning Collaborative. I can only hint at the intricate detail of the DLC’s excellent learning design here; if you want to know more, check the resources at the end of the previous post. But […]

The idea of Professional Learning Communities, appealing in the abstract, has suffered during the NCLB decade by its connection to tedious and frustrating review of NCLB-mandated measures of academic achievement. For many educators the term ‘PLC’ has come to mean torturous sessions in which the participants mutually expose their inability to ensure that all children […]

It’s been said that K-12 education standards run a mile wide and an inch deep. Well, Colorado is gearing up to go deep. Along with Wisconsin, Kentucky, and Oklahoma, new Colorado standards include Depth of Knowledge (DOK) indicators, based on the model developed by Norman Webb of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. There are 4 levels: […]

Imagine that schools were communities of learning. What would it look like? How would it be different from what we typically do now? My colleague Dixie Good and I have many opportunities to observe and think about learning communities; sadly, most of the communities we observe are not schools. Our experience suggests some thoughts about […]

In Colorado Springs School District 11, the school board has adopted the ACHIEVE profile of a high school graduate. It’s D11’s take on the traits and skills necessary for a person to thrive in the 21st Century. The profile is a good target. C21L worked with the district on refining the ACHIEVE model and thinking […]

A few weeks ago, I listened to a presentation by Colorado 3rd grade teacher Terri Reh on how she uses social network tools for professional learning. This is an area in which I am developmentally delayed, and her narrative was both inspirational and informative for me. Below are my notes from that presentation, which she […]

On Wednesday this week I played my last game of softball with the Lost Boyz. In case you missed the reports on ESPN, the Lost Boyz have been my team for the past 14 years. We play seven months of each year (March through October) in a highly competitive double-header league, and we are very […]

In The Checklist Manifesto Atul Gawande argues that the complexity of human undertakings can be managed more effectively through the use of (you guessed it) checklists. No, really. And he makes an excellent case. First, he points out that “[T]he volume and complexity of what we know has exceeded our individual ability to deliver its […]